15% of the global population has some form of disability, including visual, auditory, or cognitive disabilities. In many countries, it’s now a legal requirement to ensure that people with disabilities can access the information they need. As stated by Anacom, Portugal now even mandates telecom companies to ensure equal access for individuals with disabilities, requiring tailored equipment, software and tariffs starting from June 28, 2025, aligning with EU accessibility directives to enhance digital inclusivity and equal opportunities. But supporting accessibility should be motivated by a need for compliance and the desire to ensure all customers have a good digital experience.
All customers should be able to access and understand the information provided by their Service Providers through digital channels. This includes every communication read by or sent to customers, such as website content, onboarding or bill notifications, text messages, and in-app notifications.
From a billing perspective, customers must understand what they’re signing up for, what their charges are, and why they have to pay the amount stated on the bill. However some customers have disabilities that affect their digital experience and, thus, their ability to understand key communications such as bills.
Sources: Colour Blind Awareness, IAPB Vision Atlas, Elinet, National Center for Education Statistics, Eurostat
Most UN Member States and the European Union have committed to ensuring increased digital accessibility, including online access to information, products, and services for those with disabilities.
Ensuring your communications are accessible is not a ‘nice to have’ but essential to ensure a good digital experience for all your customers. The foundation of compliance is adhering to a technology-neutral standard for electronic content – such as the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative, WCAG 2.0. Countries around the world now have policies and laws to ensure digital accessibility and non-discrimination – many of which are based on the WCAG 2.0 standard – including Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK, and the US.
While accessibility has been mandated in many countries, implementing accessibility initiatives provides many benefits beyond a simple box-ticking exercise. Importantly, in the B2B market, employee experience (EX) is now extremely important, and enterprise customers have their accessibility targets and requirements. Ensuring that all employees can easily understand their bills is, therefore, extremely important in B2B billing and B2C settings.
The benefits of supporting improved accessibility
At Calvi, we’re firm believers in the right to equal access, and, as a result, we’ve built a software solution that’s 100% accessible and fully compliant with WCAG 2.1 guidelines. We’ve have optimized our solution for text-to-speech readers and we continue to monitor new standards and mandates as they emerge to ensure our solution remains fully compliant, ensuring that all customers can read and understand their bills.
Service Providers must ensure compliance with WCAG 2.0, but there are also sound commercial reasons for ensuring that all customers can easily understand and use their bills. Regulations will continue to evolve in this area, creating a moving target. That’s why you need to regularly assess your compliance as you roll out new products and innovate your bills.
Walter Neeft is Calvi’s CCO and has been part of the Calvi team for over seven years. In this role, Walter focuses on strategically helping Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to utilize the enterprise billing experience, a critical element for service differentiation and customer lifetime value.
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